School Make Up days cut

From snow to flooding, the Switzerland County School Corporation has been dealing with various issues that have led to canceled classroom days this year. Thanks to a decision by the Indiana Department of Education, some of those days will not have to be made up.

From snow to flooding, the Switzerland County School Corporation has been dealing with various issues that have led to canceled classroom days this year. Thanks to a decision by the Indiana Department of Education, some of those days will not have to be made up.

School Superintendent Mike Jones said that the corporation received word earlier this week that some of the days that have been missed will be waived by the state, meaning that those days will not have to be made up before the end of the school year.

“Basically, what they’re doing is, we’re able to encompass all of the days that we’ve missed, snow days through the flood days,” Jones said. “So we missed a total of nine days: six snow days and three flood days. Under this waiver, you have to make up your first five days that you missed. So if you missed nine days, you have to make up your first five, and then, only one for every other three days you missed.”

That means, with nine days, after the five mandated, the school corporation will have to make up two more days for the four days over the mandatory five, so students will need to make up seven days instead of nine — but some of that has already been done, either through going to school on possible make up days already built into the calendar, or by the use of digital make up days.

“We went to school on Dr. Martin Luther King Day (January 15th); and we went on President’s Day (February 19th),” the superintendent said. “And we did a digital make up day on a snow day. Then we did two digital days on flood days, so that’s five.”

Jones said that students will now be coming to school on Monday, April 2nd, which was supposed to be an E-learning day, but will now be a traditional school day (that’s six). “So after that we will have to do one more day, and that will be Saturday, May 5th, which we previously announced and it will be a digital day,” Jones said.

The school corporation had previously announced a digital day for this Saturday, March 10th, but that has been canceled.